Saturday, October 15, 2011

Advantage Home conditions

Back in India and India are off to the winning ways – the formula seems to look as simple as that. Yet, the manner with which MSD and boys played the 1st ODI, there was a sense of deja vu – there was hungerness seen in the face of MSD, in particular. The 1 week extra after the early exit from ICL has done him a lot of good.

I have been mentioning in this column for quite a while that an Indian win completely depends on MSD's authority in field – I was happy to see a silly point kept for Ashwin and Jadeja and this was very much absent through out English series. MSD made everything right from the toss onwards and there was no looking back. I am also happy after the 4 consecutive innings that in Jadeja India has found an allrounder who is currently riding on a great form.


The Indian openers looked a bit ruffled, but that was understandable, yet, the manner with which Kohli and Raina batted must have already given a sound warning to English camp of what is expected to come in this series. The manner with which MSD batted was simply awesome. The lofted shots over cover-extra cover was there to be seen for the 1st time and the helicopter shot hit the ropes in a flash. That 8 out of 10 boundaries have come through the off-site lofted shots, goes to see that a lot of hungerness has come back to MSD. Once this positive sign is there, I am sure, he can convert the qualities back to the winning ways....

I am a bit disaapointed with Vinay Kumar. He, like Murali Vijay, have not been showing resilent and this was shown in his performance too! Though the performance must have got unnoticed, since India won, I think it is high time India moved on! Umesh Yadav must have had 2 wickets but these were not earned, and even though the ball was pitched short, yet on these 2 occassions, the credit show go the curator as the ball hit the stumps after keeping low.

I was thoroughly impressed with Jadeja's and Ashwin's performance – there were lots of guiles and both the bowlers flighted the ball and allowed the batsman to commit mistakes.

India are 1-0 ahead in the series and already it seems that Indian Cuisine it too hot for Cook and his boys.

2 comments:

Raja said...

On home ground it is tough to beat India.

Unknown said...

Absolutely....that is why it is always advantage home conditions....